Kampfer Episode 3

October 14, 2009

Despite having girls throwing themselves at him left and right, I can’t say I envy Natsuru when some of them just see “her” as the new plaything. A handful even go so far as tying him up and having their way with him. Wait a second, that’s not so bad…If they’re attractive and not complete sadists that is. So as expected, this episode revolves around Natsuru settling into life on the girls’ side of school — the highly sought after ”secret garden” blossoming with young beauties as far as the eye can see. As the new “onee-sama” to these male-starved school girls, he gets subjected to practically everything. This includes the class rep, vice class rep (Gotou Yuuko), and treasurer exploiting his popularity as an easy cash-grab, plus Akane’s younger friend, Nishino Masumi of the newspaper club, prying into his private life and publicizing that “she” is a lesbian. Due to Masumi’s efforts, this also results in some bondage and teasing, which Natsuru seemed to enjoy more than he was letting on.

It wasn’t all torture though, as Natsuru had Kaede groping his breasts and confessing to him (again), which even has Akane jealous now. While I question Akane’s taste in going after a gender bender knowingly, Natsuru’s still oblivious to her feelings because of how dense he is. To make things more complicated, Shizuku figures it’d be fun telling everyone that this Senou Natsuru is going out with the Senou Natsuru on the guys’ side. Kaede of course takes exception to this pretense, especially when she sees Akane on top of Natsuru in the library.

So now that male Natsuru is completely boned in terms of getting on Kaede’s good side, I think he should just pursue option #2: Yuri. In his female form, he could probably do whatever he wants to Kaede at this point and that silly girl would probably enjoy it. Like seriously, she’s so head-over-heels gay right now it’s not even funny. (Okay, it’s a little funny because I hear Ranka Lee throwing herself at someone.) In addition, the damn guy can get Akane too if he wants! She comes in two flavours to boot — submissive and dominatrix. Hmm, maybe I envy him a bit after all. -_-;

Despite the lack of any Kampfer fights this week, I rather enjoyed this episode because this is the aspect of the series I was looking forward to the most. Watching Natsuru in all these unfortunate circumstances (i.e. blessings in disguise) and seeing how he handles them is like watching a guy constantly wrestling with his conscience. I just can’t help but picture an inner angel and inner devil for each of his decisions, even though Natsuru is evidently a very earnest guy. That’s where the entertainment for me comes in though. While I can’t say I’d handle every opportunity like he does, it’s that whole “what-if” mentality that makes these cross-gender series funny. It’s not the laugh-until-you-cry type of comedy, but more so the, “Daaamn, I don’t know what I’d do in his shoes” type.

That said, I don’t know what Natsuru’s going to do now that Kaede hates the male version of him. However, I’m actually kind of glad they sped through the other material, seeing where we are now. Next time, it looks like Natsuru will not only have to deal with Kaede’s feelings, but the lack of support he has up top as well.